Orpheus

Mourn with me o’ nightingale Make sorrow the loss His loss Dragged back down Down to hell. What songs he sung to her Charmed from the lyre Given from the sun The muse What songs he sung. And jealous fey sent snake To wrap round love To stifle voice and lovers touch With poison The jealous fey did strike. Sweet nymph, sweet Eurydice The birds do cry, the beasts do weep To hear the lovers lament What mocking gods Would him deny, another life? For love he braved The paths of hell Laid down by Aristaeos To beg the Hades born Relent her soul. Upon him came, the wrath filled dead With envy for life But hateful spectre and maddened ghost Did quall beneath his lyres note And pass he did, to Hades court. Stood before the gods he played And pleased the dead Brought grim locked smile to Hades lip And tear to loveless Persephone Whose countenance did soften a heart of deadened stone. Release the nymph, and let her leave But she will follow thee The lord of the dead did acquiesce Though look back not you may Lest hell reclaim her to its breast. The bard did lead her out of hell A gallant true But curious, he heard no sound And at the gates of Greece and Hades Returned a glance, that damned her down. Screaming she was torn from he And struck with grief, like steely knife To lose her twice was worse than life But no recourse, Hades bargain unmade He trudged away; numb, never to play again Upon the earth his lyre smash, renounce his voice, Beguiling of both man and beast Weep Apollo, and mother muse For son is dead If not in body, then sure of soul. For seven months at Styrmon sat And fasted for his lover gone His mind he pained, and would not rest Till sick with suffering Retired to Haemos’s mighty peak. There lost in drudge, his youth did fade Till upon him came the Maenad girls Naked and shameless they fell on him Used his body, rode upon it And tore it spent asunder, limb aside from limb. But after death, mothers tribe could not let lay The cacophony of muse, did carry him to Olympus Mount Where body interred…forever more. Save head…which, with shattered lyre, Was fed unto the hebros flow. Till it fell upon the Lesbos shore And there the folk did remember Sweet Bard, lover of Eurydice And did lay his rest Upon their isles, to haunt forever more. So to this day, and ever from The isle of Lesbos is strong of verse And song of nightingale is sung more sweet That man and gods remember Apollo’s son…born to muse…noble Orpheus. Written November 30th, 2001 © on Nov 29 2001 10:32 PM PST   0 • 8